Following are some objects to consider when creating a Day of the Dead Altar. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are central to a traditional Mexican Day of the Dead altar.

* Portrait of the Virgin Guadalupe, Patron Saint of Mexico

* Flowers:

o the cempasuchil flower or orange marigold, which is considered the traditional Aztec flower of the Toltec goddess, Xochiquetazl, the guardian of the graves.*
o Trail of Cempasuchil flowers to lead the dead to the home and altar
o baby’s breath
o wild purple orchids
o coxcombs
o white amaryllis

* Traditionally orange has been the color of the dead along with purple, white, gold, black, and pink, as seen in the other important flowers
* Copal in an incense burner. Copal is a tree resin, sweetened by mixing it with sage and grass. If copal is not available, use any incense.*
* Water, in case the spirits are thirsty from their long journey.*
* Photographs of loved ones.*
* Food. Some Mexican food such as tamales, mole, beans, tacos, tortillas, and salsa as well as special U.S. foods preferred by the departed. Fruits and squashes, pumpkins, etc. can be added as well.* You can also use our recipes for the pan de muerto [see below!], which is very traditional.
* Soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, Orange Crush, etc.; you can also purchase Jarritos, a Mexican soda, at your local Latino store.
* Toys and candy for children.
* Money to remind us that even if we need money we must also be generous with it.
* Other religious symbols such as crosses and icons of saints.
* Candles of all sizes.

* The votive candles found in many Mexican stores which have Catholic saints on them may be appropriate and lend an authentic touch.

Other altar traditions from pre-Columbian times are:

* A frog, which generally represents fertility and also represents the twilight of each day.
* A feather of a rooster to remind us of dawn.
* A mirror to remember the duality of life and death.
* Calaveras, or skulls.* In pre-Columbian times the skulls were symbols of death and sacrifice. They are now satirical and comic.

By using four levels for the altar and the objects listed below you can incorporate some important Aztec symbolism:

Ingredients

1 quart sugarcane spirit, brandy or rum (traditional, but may be omitted)

Instructions

Cut the sugar cane into strips, wash the fruit thoroughly and cut the guavas into pieces. Boil in the water with the sugar cane, tejocotes (apricots or peaches may be substituted), prunes and cinnamon.

When cooked, add the sugar. Remove from heat and add the brandy.

Again, if I could boil water… I’d literally kill for some Mexican sweet bread and a lovely home-cooked liquor – alcoholic or other – made from sugar cane and fresh guava.

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[A]nd as a result, the New York Times editorial page accused the Obama administration, to which they had been extremely friendly for the first nine months, of complicity in the cover-up of the war crimes of the Bush administration, which is an extraordinarily serious charge to make. In fact, it’s one of the most serious charges you can make about a president. The word “cover-up” has lots of rhetorical significance and packs a big punch. And when you combine that with “war crimes,” even in our political discourse, that’s a serious accusation. And to see the New York Times making it so unapologetically and forcefully, I thought, given their pro-Obama sympathies, was something really worth highlighting. . . . . .

I agree… I not only cringed catching her this past week but literally hid in the bed. I did love it when she got ”taken on”, so to speak, on the hideous bombing. She dodged of course (and was imperial and vicious in reminding the people under the bombs that ”wars are going on”, lousy bitch!) but no one, and a lot of them were women I noticed, in the audience looked happy or mollified.

ALBANY, N.Y. — Fighting plunging support, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava abruptly suspended her campaign Saturday in the 23rd Congressional District special election that has exposed a rift among national factions of the party.

Campaign spokesman Matt Burns said Scozzafava thinks stepping aside is for the best of the party. He said Scozzafava is essentially withdrawing from the race, although her name will remain on Tuesday’s ballot.

“It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support,” Scozzafava said in a written statement. “Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit.”

The announcement comes after a Siena College poll found she was in third place with 20 percent of the vote in the heavily Republican district that has been safe ground for the party for more than 100 years. Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman and Democratic nominee Bill Owens were too close to call with 35 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

[D]avid Brooks circles the categorical imperative like a turd in a toilet, but will not flush. Is Obama, in Afghanistan, acting only according to maxim that he can will into universal law? Yuuuuuhhhhh, Dave don’t know. But he suspects not. In a Friedmanesque turn of phrase, he diagnoses the dilemma: “a determination vacuum.” Well, sure. Or a mineshaft gap. The point, ladies, is that while Obama’s mind grasps the probability cloud of the newly re-coined AfPak conflict like a goddamn quantum computer, he lacks the will. The tenacity. The stick-to-it-ive-ness. That certain je ne sais quoi. He is not Lincoln. Not Churchill. He is one of us, only, pure prose. Or, no, that was Lowell describing Mussolini. What day is this? . . . . .

oh I love the phtot that shows both spans of the BBB… the SF side… and the “other part” that exits from Yerba Buena Island. Great shot.

BTW, people living on Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island (site of the old Pan Pacific Exposition) have to wait for an escort to take them home. I bet they really cannot wait. Their only way in is via the damned BBB.

Other updates, which give remarkably few details, indicate that Cal Trans is reinstalling the same fix with some “design enhancements with different elements” added to strengthen the connections between the parts. This is also consistent with other statements that blame “metal fatigue” (which means metal breaks when it is bent back and forth enough times). It is important to note that welded joints themselves are remarkably intolerant of bending. In other words, when a welded joint is flexed, it tends to break rather than bend. So I’m guessing that the engineers will want to weld on additional pieces of steel over the joints between the parts. Then these steel pieces will tolerate a little bending and reduce the stress on the welded joint itself. Or alternatively, extra parts are welded on to simply minimize the total amount of flexing, that is, to make the whole saddle/crossbar assembly more rigid.

In retrospect, it is impressive to me that they managed to cook up this kludge (that what us engineers call something cooked up to solve a problem quickly) in short order, but it was a little underdesigned. It might have been a better idea to also try to replace the broken Eyebar soon after the band-aid was installed (it’s been almost two months, but I guess they didn’t want to close the bridge again to install a new Eyebar). . . . . . . .

😆 The story for why it was semi promised to be open or at least under final inspection by mid or afternoon Friday.. (but is most certainly not open) is that they are still welding.

The part B of the story is that “alignment” is the issue. Teh exact alignment needed between multiple — 😆 — KLUDGES, top and bottom, with the cables or bars as connectors. And they, top bottom and sides, must align PERFECTLY.

I saw too they say eyebars are failing in other places, bridges from the same era.

It really WAS a strong bridge… it was built (completed in 1936) for the coming war, for munitions and materiel transport.. and with the expectation there might be troop trains installed on the lower level. BUT all the roads and bridges have had loads, volume and traffic not really anticipated, going over them for 50 years now.

In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious “evidence” from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.

Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September’s G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops — an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.

A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison’s house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters — all purportedly evidence that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.

But a closer look at the court documents leaves the unmistakable impression that Elliott Madison is yet another casualty of the government’s nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.

Madison, his wife and his lawyer Martin Stolar say the search violates the Constitution’s protections against general searches and prosecution for political speech. The police also seized mobile phones, citizen emergency kits, manuscripts, posters and even the couple’s marriage license.

There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops — an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.

I have read about that raid… and really except for being in Pittsburgh and providing strategy and organising for a demonstration, imo, he has done nothing. Except he did the wrong things in the view of the State.

I’d laugh uproariously and say we have a “community organiser” in the WH… but he really! never did anything… he collated peoples’ stories of living in the projects, esp Altgeld Gardens, and re-wrote their stories into text mulch for appeals for money support. He did technical writing for grant applications, essentially.

Which of course means that she’s joining w/ the Israelis to tell the Palestinians to go fuck themselves:

JERUSALEM — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that Israel is making “unprecedented” concessions on West Bank settlement construction – a position clearly at odds with the prevailing Palestinian view.

Palestinian leaders have said they will not return to peace talks with Israel unless it halts all settlement building on lands they claim for a future state, and they believe Israel has blatantly defied a U.S. demand for a settlement freeze.

“What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements … is unprecedented,” she said.

The issue of settlements has become the biggest sticking point in getting Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Clinton made it clear that she wasn’t pleased with Israeli settlement construction but that it was no reason to hold up talks.

“There are always demands made in any negotiation that are not going to be fully realized,” she said.

Clinton also agreed with a statement by Netanyahu that Palestinians had never demanded a settlement freeze in the past as a condition for sitting down with Israel.

Reporting from Hoboken, N.J. – Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, climbed on a stage here the other night and hailed his state's political history at a rally for Jon Corzine, the embattled Democratic governor running for reelection.

"New Jersey," Booker shouted to supporters in the upscale sushi bar, "is a state of impossible dreams."

Until recently, that described Corzine's likely odds at the ballot box Tuesday. But the unpopular governor's race against Christopher Christie, the Republican challenger, has tightened to a dead heat after months of relentless negative campaigning by both sides.

Political analysts say Corzine, 62, now may be poised to pull an upset and keep the state in Democratic hands. Most credit President Obama, at least in part, for the apparent surge of support.

Corzine praises Obama at every stop and argues that only he himself can help the White House achieve its priorities in Washington. "We have to do our part to make sure our president passes healthcare," he told the crowd here. . . . . .

Well so says the LAT. I have no clue……………

He is good for laughs…

Christie told the older voters that he and his wife may be forced to move to a state with lower taxes if he is not elected, an unusual pledge for a candidate.

“We’ll become airplane grandparents,” he said, though he and his wife, Mary Pat, have no grandchildren. “If you are wondering why I’m running for governor, that’s why.” . . . . .

Reminds me that Harold Ford, in his looney run in Tenn, identified a black grandmother as white.

["I]t's such a dismal race," said John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. "People want solutions that no one is offering. The campaign has been depressing even for political junkies."

When more than 1,000 Democrats packed a wedding hall Tuesday night in West Orange, Bill Clinton lavished praise on Corzine for lowering crime, improving schools and helping the elderly.

"Why are we even having this race?" the former president asked in mock frustration. "This man has been a great governor in difficult times."

But the hollers and applause for Clinton quickly died when Corzine stepped up to speak. "He's not a charismatic speaker," explained Phil Thigpen, chairman of the Essex County Democratic Committee. "That's a tough sell when people are having a hard time."

"We can't get the base fired up like we need," said Ronald Rice, a Democratic state senator and former deputy mayor of Newark. "He can't connect with people." . . . . .

No matter what, probably a lot of sweat will get shed Tuesday afternoon in NJ.

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who’s proposed a massive overhaul of the nation’s banks. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”

Why would you let this guy out if you didn’t want to terrify people? That bulging dome always leaning into the camera as if it might explode, the rapid fire non sequitur mumbling just below the audible.

The first lady was dressed as a leopard, with a smear of eyeliner, fuzzy ears and a spotted orange-and-black top. The president was dressed as a middle-aged dad, with a black cardigan, checkered shirt and sensible brown slacks.

So… let me get this straight. Cousin Pookie in the Jersey hinterlands (HA! 🙄 ) is a problem. And a few weeks ago people in Washington get all “wee’d wee’d up”. (I wonder how many more of these aphorisms-from-on-high are hidden from us…)

“You’re going to need to get cousin Pookie off the couch, and say, ‘Pookie, it’s time to go vote,’ ” POTUS said. “You’ve all got a cousin Pookie, you know who I’m talking about.”

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who’s proposed a massive overhaul of the nation’s banks. “This is fraud and should be prosecuted.”

John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who served on an advisory committee to the New York Stock Exchange, said that investment banks have wide latitude to manage their assets, and so the legality of Goldman’s maneuvers depends on what its executives knew at the time.

“It would look much more damaging,” Coffee said, “if it appeared that the firm was dumping these investments because it saw them as toxic waste and virtually worthless.”

More and more all of this reminds me of those Irish extraction flim flam men… itinerant in some sense, moving around, landing on vulnerable small towns and neighborhoods, streets… convincing people with a little but not a lot of money to get new rooves or driveways.

Til the country owns up that most of Wall Street is made up of Jewish/Irish/Borderer types/Others who are nothing but con men (and women)… it will go on.

The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone–including an American citizen–an “unlawful enemy combatant.” A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration–and now to the Obama Administration–he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it–well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.

In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said “enemy combatants”–again, including American citizens.

These two documents first came into play on November 3, 2002, when a CIA-operated Predator drone plane violating Yemeni airspace fired a Hellfire missile at a car containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly Al Qaeda’s #1 man in Yemen at the time.

U.S. officials didn’t know that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, was riding along. (You know what they say about hitchhiking.) “The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal…this is legal because the president and his lawyers say so–it’s not much more complicated than that,” CBS News reported at the time. “I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here,” said Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, after the CIA assassinations. “He’s well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority.”

It’s right there in the Constitution between the right to tax and the repeal of Prohibition.

Now that times have supposedly changed, it’s time to ask: why hasn’t President Obama abrogated Bush’s controversial executive orders? If Obama truly seeks a break with the lawlessness of the prior administration, what better way to enact it?

Simply put, no one man–not even a nice, articulate, charismatic one–ought to claim the right to suspend a person’s constitutional rights. Not in America. Certainly no one man–not even a young, handsome, likeable one–should be able to have anyone he wants whacked. Even in dictatorships, the right of life and death is reserved for judges and juries operating under a system purportedly designed to support impartiality and a search for the truth.

But that’s not the case here in the United States. In 2002 Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University asked: “Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under [the Bush] theory? The answer is yes, you could.”

Nothing much has changed since then. Obama has eliminated the use of the phrase “enemy combatant,” but The New York Times reported that the change is merely meant to “symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies.” The words may have changed, but Obama attorney general Eric Holder’s definition of who can and cannot be held, said the Times, is “not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration.”

These days, Obama has ramped up the assassination of political opponents of the U.S. and the U.S.-aligned authoritarian regime in Pakistan, deploying more Predator drone plane attacks than Bush. But that’s just for now. Obama could still personally order a government agency to murder you.

But that’s not the case here in the United States. In 2002 Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University asked: “Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under [the Bush] theory? The answer is yes, you could.”

I remember that. I think Bush was about codifying into law… and Ob is about putting a pretty face on the same things.

We are cooked.

Ritter has a piece up at TruthDig… that maintains (I think he may be partly right) that Bush will be treated too gently by history. And Ob will be exposed as a war monger who kept things going he said he would reverse. (He did IMPLY he would reverse s o m e things… despite his pro war Af-Pak rhetoric – which was there for anyone who listened…)

Ritter was on KGO last night… and did not go that far. I waited thru the whole hour (3 to 4 am, so heavily listened to!) to see if he would. He did smash the really lame idea that we must stay in Afghanistan to “save the women”. He said more have died under known honor killings since we have been there than before. A little stunning. He was no where near strong enough on what he said.

it’s a very CORPORATE way of state terror. Put life and death into the hands of managers, who will make the “tough” decisions, make it automated and cold and institutional. No pleadings, no debate welcome, just BAM, make the decision, then BAM bloody smear on the ground.

Same mindset that drives so many of our industries, mining misery for profit.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — CIT Group Inc., one of the nation’s leading funders of small and medium-sized businesses, filed for the fifth largest bankruptcy by assets in U.S. history Sunday as part of a reorganization plan that has the support of an overwhelming majority of debtholders.

In a statement, the company said it is asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York for a quick approval of the prepackaged plan. CIT said none of its operating subsidiaries would be affected by the filing, allowing them to continue operations.

“The decision to proceed with our plan of reorganization will allow CIT to continue to provide funding to our small business and middle market customers, two sectors that remain vitally important to the U.S. economy,” said CIT (CIT, Fortune 500) chairman Jeffrey M. Peek.

In the bankruptcy filing, CIT said it had $71 billion in assets and $64.9 billion in liabilities.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said yesterday that she is planning to hold a markup Tuesday on S. 1733 (pdf), a bill that seeks to curb domestic greenhouse gas emissions across much of the U.S. economy.

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

I always come back to (and use when the issue comes up) of Burton, the Republican who held the seat/chairmanship Waxman now holds, which is a regulatory committee about GOVERNMENT… Burton wrested extra powers for the Chair of the committee to use against Clinton. Example, he issued 170 (or 140, I forget) subpoenas for the Christmas Card Gate. Geesh… anyoen even remember THAT one?

One of the big issues with the incoming Dem majorities was, Would Pelosi ALLOW Waxman to use the powers that Burton grabbed for that committe and that Chair.

I have never heard that Waxman is able to really work autonomously. And I think he is one that would like to get some things done. Not just usher in what is “allowed”.

In a true sign of the cultish, anti-reality based orange community, somebody posts a diary asking if it’s true Markos endorsed Scozzafava and the faithful loons rush in to claim he did no such thing despite some brave souls posting Markos’ actual clear endorsement. As Kos would say, Idiots.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, we have allowed a non-human entity (I say non-human because quite frankly they don’t act like they are human with the human qualities of compassion, and concern for others who are less fortunate) like corporate America to convince us that we can’t possibly live without them. If they did not exist we wouldn’t, couldn’t survive as a society in general. It’s strange how for several thousands of years humanity has done just that, survived without big corporations, but apparently no one told them that they couldn’t. In short we have allowed them to get a stranglehold, and they are choking the life out of us.

I am strangely reminded of a tarot card that shows the figures of a naked male and female bedecked with horns on their heads, and chains around their necks. Above them is a figure that is supposed to represent Satan. Satan sits on a cube which is supposed to represent the material world to which the figures are tethered by their chains. The interesting part is that the ch ains around the figures necks are quite loose, and could be removed at will. However, there seems to be no “will” to do so. Instead of noticing that they are chained they are looking at one another and it appears to be that they are quite ignorant of their perilous situation.

I feel that we are for the most part, those loosely chained figures that are tethered to the material world but instead we are tethered to the material world of corporate America. We seem to be just as oblivious and ignorant of our own situation and slavery as those figures is. We could if we wished throw those chains off, but we don’t seem to have the will to do so just as those figures seem not to have the will either.

He replies:

Yes, we dehumanize ourselves through corporations. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that global corporations operating collectively now constitute an intelligent entity cultivating humanity for its providence and sustained animation. There’s no rule that says all intelligent entities must contain blood or chlorophyll. I know that sounds a bit Matrix-y, but when you consider the relationship between man and the thick crust of machinery, technology and scientific industrial regimen now wrapping the planet — it’s hard not to draw that comparis on.

Personally, I do not believe there are enough brave, insightful Americans in existence to step forward and begin turning the machine around. Nor would enough people follow them to get the job accomplished even of there were. Man the mimicking socially oriented ape just wants to be normal — and the corporate state issues the boundaries of what is normal when it issues products. Just as the early hominid was modified by environment, diet, terrain, existing shelter, so we have been modified by consumer product lines. It was inevitable that we would conform to our industrially manufactured environment of commodities and their associated marketing. And when you stop to think how corporations entirely dominate the needs hierarchy (try to think of some material aspect of your life that is not supplied by or distributed through a corporation). But hell, what do I know? I just look around me at very normal stuff and draw conclusions.

The blurring of the real world with manufactured imagery by media on behalf of the corpocracy has been going on a long time. And yes, the media does get paid to do the propaganda work. It’s called advertising and marketing money, which is of course the lifeblood of the media. Nobody had to conspire with the media to use the media as propaganda. In a capitalist system that is the only purpose of media, given that media must be for-profit to even exist, and that its value is judged by its stock price, not by the quality of its product.

You can scream at the top of your lungs, but I’d suggest you save the strain on your larynx. Nobody can hear us, hermetically sealed in the vacuum of the nation’s living rooms media streaming the national consumer message straight to their cerebral cortexes. We have reached the point where only media can be heard regarding anything significant. It the corpo-political machine wants to hear from us, it will stage a Tea Party or a Town Hall Meeting featuring what it considers the most entertaining and useful fools among us to rage against decent healthcare, or to rant against the war in Iraq, thus demonstrating that the Great American Capitalist Democracy Machine, in all of its goodness, allows freedom of opinion and speech.

One tried and true solution, of course, is self realization and inner liberation. Seeing the world with the cold eyes of the simplest and purest sort of awareness, and a fiery compassionate heart. Seeing the world without illusion, which is very hard and constant work. Then keeping it personally unto ourselves. Keeping our traps shut about it but acting individually upon what we see before our eyes each day, and not according to the consensus of those around us.

Trying to persuade others or persuade the masses is a waste of time. Doing that only leads to mass embrace of yet another mediocre solution — because the powers that manage our society know what to do with any mass behavior, including a mass appeal for change. They embrace it and make a profit from a fake solution, or a political career from the photo op of the embrace, but never delivering a solution or ending the popular outrage and discontent. That’s where such things as “no child left behind,” (the outrage over our crappy public education), or “the ownership society,” (discontent regarding the disparity of home ownership, thus the subprime mortgage industry scam). Or “nation building” (worldwide discontent over massive U.S. military aggression and destruction.

Incidentally, this should have been called “nation rebuilding,” since we dropped more explosive power on that country than we did in all of World War II). That’s what I find disheartening about the so-called grassroots initiatives for change. They are well meaning, but nobody seems to understand that the grass is growing on the turf of a totalist corporate state, with its roots dependent upon the corporate hegemony for nourishment. If the big dogs don’t continue to shit on them daily, they whither and die. The big dogs know that, and they know that the grassroots-ers are moreover powerless, and that only the local pups need worry about them at all — unless they start burning some shit down and blowing some stuff up on a sufficient scale.

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.